CNN’s Brian Stelter swears to Stephen Colbert that even Fox News knows it’s full of crap
Colbert did take Stelter to task for CNN's whole Cuomo brothers conflict of interest
TV News CNN
CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter has had plenty of news media about which to correspond lately. And while the Reliable Sources anchor had to rely on The Late Show’s thankfully edited-down (and cheekily re-edited) version of New York Governor and multiply accused sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo’s Wednesday resignation speech, since he napped through the actual press conference, he had a snappy excuse. “He’s not smart enough to resign,” Stelter told Colbert about his thought process in grabbing some afternoon winks in lieu of live-watching the governor of New York defiantly flee from office (if that’s a thing) in the face of at least eleven women’s accusations of criminal sexual behavior. Nobody’s saying that keeping up with the 24-hour news cycle isn’t exhausting, but, still, Stelter.
Colbert joshed his first-time guest about that ill-advised nap, but spent more than a few minutes grilling Stelter about CNN’s questionable handling of Cuomo’s reign as governor, especially since one of its major talking heads shares a last name with said elected official. Confirming the New York Times’ report that CNN’s Chris Cuomo was, indeed, assisting his big brother’s communications team in navigating that whole “accused of being a sex creep” minefield, Stelter stuck up for his network’s handling of the “really complicated” situation, but Colbert wasn’t having it. “Why? He doesn’t,” was Colbert’s retort to Stelter’s suggestion that CNN “has to have boundaries” between—just for one example—an embattled official talking political strategy with one of the newspeople supposedly applying the most disinterested journalistic standards to several major scandals. Stelter countered that “there’s no page” in the journalism handbook for such a scenario, but, as Colbert noted doggedly, CNN management’s decision to take Chris Cuomo off the big brother beat during this scandal doesn’t make up for the fact that the CNN Cuomo brothers’ double act all through the pandemic (including while Andrew Cuomo’s handling of it was under serious scrutiny) undoubtedly helped raise the governor’s political profile.
Still, there are news scandals involving torn familial versus journalistic loyalty and then there are news scandals about an entire, rudderless, “automatic contrarian” news outlet seemingly dedicated to pushing white supremacist insurrection against American democracy while simultaneously spewing medical misinformation laser-targeted at picking off its all-too-receptive viewers. As Stelter noted, his 2020 exposé of Fox News, Hoax, is already out with a 12-chapter update chronicling just how bad things have gotten since Fox’s favorite son (and Fox talent landing zone) Donald Trump was voted out of office. “Trump’s loss radicalized the network,” said Stelter, leaving Colbert to wonder how the scandal and propaganda-riddled pre-Trump Fox could be considered the good old days.
As Stelter noted, his sources inside Fox News say that things have actually gotten worse since the well-deserved shit-canning of both Fox CEO Ailes and fellow accused sexual predator Donald Trump. “They are disturbed about what happens on the air,” stated Stelter of those Fox News employees willing to spill to an anchor at a competing news network, telling Colbert that Fox is “afraid of its viewers.” To that point, Stelter said that, for all Ailes’ well-deserved reputation for personal and professional awfulness, “at least they knew who was in charge.” Whereas now those Fox insiders desperately clinging to the fantasy that they’re still actual journalists now have to worry that telling uncomfortable truths will drive their viewers to even more radically and farcically right-wing outlets like Newsmax or OAN in their quest to have the world conform to their increasingly blinkered and fringe-adjacent views of it.
Stelter swore to Colbert that, while many of these possibly self-deluding real newspeople have fled Fox as the “true believers” have grabbed power in the wake of Ailes’ 2016 ouster, there are still Fox employees who know Fox is “just selling the product they think their clients want.” You know, like the Big Lie about stolen elections, the equally egregious falsehood that the January 6 coup was not a coup, and the ongoing toxic flood of Fox COVID misinformation. As to that last point, Colbert, citing the aging demographic makeup of Fox-watchers, mused, “It doesn’t seem like a great business model to kill your viewer.” Stelter, responding with a shrug, agreed, saying of Fox’s apparent suicide mission to nay-say medical experts in the face of once-more rising COVID deaths among the unvaccinated, “Fox has lost control of the monster that it’s created.” Well, not to worry, Fox loyalists, it turned out just fine in the end for Doctor Frankenstein. Pretty sure that’s how it went.
39 Comments
Brian Stelter makes so much hay by acting like Fox News is a legitimate news source every Sunday morning, guy annoys the shit out of me.
Trump proved a major financial and cultural boon to Liberalism by giving them something to mock, campaign against, and feel superior towards without them needing to advocate for reform or meaningful systemic change. The ore-Trump status quo looks so good in comparison that they can all do grave news reports about those whackadoodle Trump folk and then get right back to maintaining the rotting status-quo if a dying Republic.Te fact that on the first hundred days in offer the Democrats made zero moves to try and reign:in the powers of the presidency that Trump proved were so easy to abuse is the most damning inditement that for them the abberation of Trump wasn’t really any of his policies but the fact that he didn’t respect the process of the system to carry them out.So yeah, fuck Brian Seltzer for eating airspace about Fox News’ transgressions rather than holding anyone actually in power to account.Sorry I am just hella disillusioned these days. I’m not even American and I’m bummed
The US Congress has spent decades ceding their powers to the Executive in the name of easy reelectability, there’s no possible way they’re gonna stop now.
“without them needing to advocate for reform or meaningful systemic change”…what.
Exactly that. The Dems don’t have to do anything now except undo what Trump did to look like conquering heroes. You want police reform? Sorry, best I can do is Juneteenth.
You’ve moved the goalposts. OP was talking about advocating. You’re talking about doing.
I’m not the dude you’re replying to, but I think he was saying that Trump got power and so Democrats basically just had to take a stance of “Trump bad” to get political capital on their side, but without actually desiring to roll back some of his disastrous moves while he was in power or advance ideas in a meaningful way other than making fun of the guy. Now Democrats are in power, but aren’t doing very much with it, though of course, there’s “convenient” road blocks in place like Manchin and Sinema. But in reality, I’d wager there’s lots of establishment democrats that are glad that those two are grinding things to a halt so that no progressive stuff gets done so they can continue to blame everyone else for failures without actually advancing new progressive legislation.
It is curious where the FOX News execs thinks the company might be in ~15-20 yrs. Any advertiser or agency believing that a meaningful aggregate of people under 60 yrs old TODAY watches that network is delusional.
I’d be really surprised if they plan more than a year or two into the future.
All I know about Stelter is that Alex Jones hates him, frequently going into spittle-flecked rants about what a “demonically possessed child molester” Stelter allegedly resembles. My working theory is that Stelter looks like Jones minus decades of alcoholism, performative rage, and lost lawsuits, plus an actually successful career in what can legally be defined as “journalism”, and Jones resents the fuck out of him for it.
All I know about Stelter is that Alex Jones hates him
Alex Jones hates everybody. That’s not really an indicator of anything.
That’s not true, he loves, umm, Steve Pieczenick and… this one weird Italian guy who used to be a house DJ and invented a religion based on The Matrix.
That’s rich. CNN and MSNBC are both corporate profit motivated news entertainment channels, just like Fox. They all made loads of money airing Donald Trump rallies, giving him a huge voice and presence that a moron like him shouldn’t have had, basically handing him the election in 2016, and then crying about it later. Corporate media is a big cesspool, and for any one of them to pretend that they are somehow better than the other is a joke.
Well, if one’s not better than the other, than they’re equal. Are they equal? In some important respects, sure, in some other also very more important respects, I’d argue no. Is there no baby of something that hews close enough to truth in the bathwater they work in?
Is Rachel Maddow a better human being than Sean Hannity? Sure. It literally doesn’t matter because the “good” ones still take their orders about what to cover and how to cover it from their bosses, and they only care about money and ratings. Case in point: Cenk Uyger left millions on the table when MSNBC wouldn’t allow him to criticize Obama. He did the right thing. He left. They are not here to help us.
I voted for Hillary and Biden, cause I’d vote for Giant Comet over Trump.But Jeezus, I can’t believe how in the tank for Joe they are. Among many other things, MSNBC and CNN were (rightfully, IMHO) all over Trump’s cognitive lapses, but there’s not a peep about Joe’s obvious struggles to get through a speech and how few questions he takes. When you’re President, these aren’t just personal health matters. There’s even not that much about how he attacks reporters for be skeptical.They covered Trump’s shameful abandonment of the Kurds in Syria. We’ll see how much coverage the rape and enslavement of all the little girls in Afghanistan gets.
Well, if one’s not better than the other, than they’re equal.
That’s an erroneous conclusion. Do CNN & MSNBC air blatant lies & bullshit? Not as standard programming, which is the MO at Fox. But corporate tv news is a fucking cesspoll, and none of them is contributing anything positive. There’s no reason for 24h news. There just isn’t. Why do you think they fill the day with hours & hours & hours of people who don’t really know what they’re talking about yelling at each other?One thing that needs to be done is to ban ads during news broadcasts. Networks can show whatever they want and air whatever ads they want, except for during a news broadcast. Tying news broadcasts to ratings is a proven recipe for disaster.
Do CNN & MSNBC air blatant lies & bullshit? Not as standard programming, which is the MO at Fox Neither need be net-positive for one to be better than the other. “None provide a public good” is an arguable opinion, although I don’t necessarily agree as a broad statement. Ratings chasing news is better than no news at all, which is better than news that chases ratings and deliberately peddles in grossly erroneous information. I mean, I agree with your over all sentiment and observations. I don’t think they’re particular novel or not widely recognized. I just don’t agree with the claim that any one network isn’t better than another network in the sense that being less bad is the very definition of “better”.
Ratings chasing news is better than no news at all, which is better than
news that chases ratings and deliberately peddles in grossly erroneous information.
Eliminating ads from news broadcasts would remove the need for ratings. If there are no ads to sell, then the ratings just don’t matter.
Again, I don’t disagree, but even traditional newspaper journalism has had to rely on advertising since beginning of days as people simply don’t value news enough to cover the costs of producing good news. I mean, if the unvarnished and highest quality news on a Tuesday is negative, it seems pretty obvious to me – and backed up by well understood mechanics of human behavior, people don’t want to pay for *that*. So even asking people to pay for the news carries a conflict of interest. Certainly the wall between advertising and news is effectively gone on many of these platforms. But to me you’re describing how things should be, and that’s the easy part to me. How do you get there is the rub? My view is you really can’t – all you can do (and this is how it’s worked historically) is try and reduce the conflict of interests as much as possible via professional bodies, laws, etc and improve education such that people value and recognize that well done news as a matter public utility is in their best interest.You can’t get to the ideal. We know we’d like to be there. How do you move the needle? IMHO you need to at least recognize that X is better than Y. A population that believes it’s all the same shit is one that doesn’t recognize the needle exists at all, let alone is invested in moving it.
even traditional newspaper journalism has had to rely on advertising since beginning of days
And yet print news isn’t driven by ratings the way tv news is.
So even asking people to pay for the news carries a conflict of interest.
No, it doesn’t. People have been buying newspapers for over a hundred years. Was the price kept artificially low because the newspapers had ads? Yes. But people paid for the news. They did it daily.
But to me you’re describing how things should be, and that’s the easy
part to me. How do you get there is the rub? My view is you really can’tYes, we can.
all you can do (and this is how it’s worked historically) is try and reduce the conflict of interests as much as possible via professional bodies, laws, etc
So let’s pass a law that bans ads during news broadcasts.
Print media doesn’t really have this problem. Maybe that’s because people have to pay to consume print media. But CNN puts 5 people yelling over each other on air for hours every day, just because people will tune in to watch. There’s zero journalistic value there (especially considering that 4 out of the 5 don’t know what they’re talking about & have no business being there), but people will tune in anyway, so CNN gets to sell ads. That’s ratings driving content, and it’s why every single 24h news network is bad.
So even asking people to pay for the news carries a conflict of interest.I wasn’t saying people won’t pay for news. I just meant to point out that when people pay for news, and thus gain a greater voice over the content that news produces, people can favour news that isn’t “healthy”. I might even suggest that newspapers not being entirely dependent on subscription fees for revenue is what permits them to some degree the freedom to produce news people don’t want to hear. So I’m pointing out there’s a balance between 100% consumer-funded and 100% advertising funded.So let’s pass a law that bans ads during news broadcasts.Again, how do you get there? Maybe it’s not a bad idea. (Although one could envision a side-effect that they’d be forced to find another poisonous source of revenue, but I’m willing to entertain the idea.)But I think among the general population that’s such a non-starter as to be moot. It’s a country that can’t even manage to take the profit motive out of healthcare, I can’t imagine even a sizable minority of American citizens finding this a politically palatable idea.There are lots of things that would work if you could wave a magic wand, but that’s where I think you are – magic wand land – with desiring such a change. We can just agree to disagree about that, tho. I very much agree that the format/medium itself predisposes networks to producing things that are not news – under the guise of being news. And that’s not a good thing.
Again, how do you get there?
Cute 😉 but I gather from your non answer that you believe there could be a political/electoral appetite to support such a measure in not-far-future time frame? okie dokie.
One thing that needs to be done is to ban ads during news broadcasts.
Should be easy, just have to amend the Constitution. How hard can that be?
In some ways MSNBC and CNN are worse. Fox viewers are the extreme weirdos that have always been with us. Fox has radicalized them somewhat, but their viewers were always a weird racist sexist authoritarian death cult. Fox viewers know they’re signing up for Right propaganda, and they’re glad it’s that way.By contrast, CNN / MSNBC viewers (and WaPo/NYT readers) assume that their media is fairly balanced, when it’s not. And their conservative bias is more subtle, so harder to detect unless you’re paying attention. So, in terms of absolute value of awfulness, Fox is worse. But in terms of who is making the country worse, I think it’s CNN/MSNBC. The 30-40 percent of the country that are death cultists have always been there. But the people in the middle of the bell curve are largely unaware that they’re consuming right propaganda from CNN and MSNBC, and are consuming those views without the critique they would have if they understood it to be propaganda.
Truly. Bernie has pretty tame common sense democratic socialist views, yet he was painted as some radical who was going to execute Chris Matthews in Central Park. But they were dying to push Biden and Buttigieg because they wouldn’t threaten the dynamic of millionaire pundits sitting around a table talking about how bad Republicans are and how great they are, all while doing literally nothing for the American people other than virtue signaling.And don’t even get me started about the Lincoln Project con artists.
the Lincoln Project con artists.
I hate those fucks. They’re a big reason why the Republican Party became what it is today. They don’t get to just wash their hands of Trump. They need to own their roles in destroying the country.
…they were dying to push Biden and Buttigieg…And don’t forget about how those two guys help keep that War Machine hummin’, which, in turn, keeps the lights at CNN/MSNBC on!
Literally all televised “news” does a disservice to the viewer.
As a non-American, after years Trump and acknowledging that Fox is a singularly evil beast that people are back to this “everyone/both sides are the same” bullshit.As an outsider, this kind of talk makes you look fucking insane.
If you want to think Trump was just some fascist shooting star that emerged because the planets aligned, that’s cool. But him being elected was a wake up call that the system is broken. Those of us who aren’t right-wing lunatics have a lot working against us here in the U.S.: the corrupt lobbying rules, corporations being deemed as people, gerrymandering, the electoral college, racist voter suppression. The one thing we needed to offset this was the fourth pillar of democracy. Serious and honest journalism to keep things in check. But they failed us, because they are all in on the take.It’s great to say that Trump is a monster. But it’s also good idea to acknowledge the environment that created him.
“CNN’s Brian Stelter swears to Stephen Colbert that even Fox News knows it’s full of crap”
Who needed Brina Stelter to tell them that?
“They are disturbed about what happens on the air,” LOL until that paycheck clears. Fox is “afraid of its viewers.” Bull fucking shit. They are afraid of them the way you are afraid of a bear that you have made lazy and complacent by domesticating and overfeeding it. The people who watch Bullshit Mountain are a bunch of lemmings and a source of ad revenue and Hannity et al. play them like fiddles, which in turn further polarizes and divides the country more than it has ever been. Fox News is a boil on this country’s ass and wherever Roger Ailes is, I hope it’s hot.
“They are afraid of them the way you are afraid of a bear that you have made lazy and complacent by domesticating and overfeeding it.”
Yeah, those fellas storming the capital sure were lazy and complacent, weren’t they?
“ there are still Fox employees who know Fox is “just selling the product they think their clients want.”Which is why a channel that advertises itself as “News” needs to be held to a higher standard. Unfettered capitalism does not work in the world of information providing.
““there’s no page” in the journalism handbook”Pretty sure “how to avoid conflict of interest” is discussed in every book about journalism ever written.
Someone needs to tell Stelter that there is, in fact, a page in the playbook about this. In fact, it’s in pretty much every journalism textbook, and it’s a pretty short page. It goes something like this:You cannot cover your family. It is a conflict of interest. The end. I’m am not here for CNN’s bullshit on this. When I was working as a journalist, legal issues were part of my beat for a while. I have an immediate family member who works in Big Law. I could not report on any stories regarding their firm. If something noteworthy happened at that firm, I had to pass that info along to my editors who would assign it to someone else to report and write. Off the top of my head, I can think of two notable stories that I had to pass on because of the connection, stories that garnered a good bit of attention. Would I have liked to be involved in the reporting of those important stories and the recognition they received? Of course. But my involvement would have jeopardized our independence and objectivity, so I had to step aside. That’s all Chris Cuomo and CNN had to do. Hell, Chris could have arranged for Andrew to be on CNN every hour on the hour, so long as someone else was writing and asking the questions.
Of course Fox News knows its full of crap. They don’t care.Of course CNN knows it should fire Chris Cuomo. They don’t care.